Baldwin] MANUAL TRAINING 47 



might just as well have been labelled manual training. Prof. Hodge 

 says that " nature-study is learning those things in nature that are 

 best worth knowing, to the end of doing those things that make life 

 most worth the living." And I wish to call attention to the fact that 

 there is good manual training in connection with most of the learn- 

 ing and all of the doing. 



We have seen that if we approach the subject from the standpoint 

 of the subjects, they are gradually coming closer and closer together. 

 And now we see that from the standpoint of the child, which is really 

 the only true line of approach and the one to which we must always 

 eventually come, there is but one answer. The child is the center. 

 He grows through his various activities. The child life is a unity. 

 Every activity is related to every other. Whether the activity take 

 the form which we call nature-study or that which we call manual 

 training, it is ever and always the same life which is being quickened. 

 Whenever and wherever the child's life is affected by contact with 

 nature he is to be encouraged in his natural desire to understand, as 

 well as one can at his stage of development understand, the meaning 

 of such natural manifestations. 



If such parts of nature are taken up at such times, enough subjects 

 will always be on hand and the interest of the child will always be at 

 white heat. We shall simply be heeding the admonition of Froebel 

 — " Follow the child." 



Our course in nature-study may seem to lack system, and will 

 indeed lack the system of the schools, but it will have a much wiser 

 system, the system of nature. The former seems fixed, unvarying, 

 but is transient, and will soon give way to another. The latter seems 

 ever varying and unstable but is as old as the human race. 



This latest kind of nature-study seems more natural, more nearly 

 approaching the way in which men have come to know of nature in 

 connection with their daily needs. This kind of nature work is not a 

 subject by itself. It is intimately connected with the whole life of 

 the child. Here manual training is absolutely demanded and must 

 be utilized. This is, I believe, the kind of nature-study and manual 

 training to which we must eventually come in the primary and grammar 

 grades of our schools. 



Now I appreciate that many of my readers are not teaching in the 

 country and that much of the work suggested must be done, if done 

 at all, in the home. Let me say then that it is not the purpose of the 

 present article to suggest just what anyone is to do in any particular 



